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John McDonnell: I shall speak to my amendment No. 14 in a moment. However, the Pinochet of Runnymede and Weybridge has excited me in respect of his vision for the future of industrial relations in this country. We should perhaps phone Anfield now, because he mentioned Merseyside as one of the areas that would not accept an imposed settlement. He would first introduce strike bans in such an area, then ban trade union membership and, if people still went on strike, he would presumably bring the full force of the law against them.
That was the Pinochet model, and he also usually had people crowded into football stadiums. Under the hon. Gentleman, Anfield and other football stadiums would be fairly crowded.
Mr. Hammond: To clarify the situation, I confirm that General Pinochet was a guest in my constituency for some time, at the insistence of the Labour Government, but he has now departed. Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the clause is specifically drawn so that a criminal offence would not be created? Any action would be a disciplinary offence between the employer and the employee, not a criminal offence.
John McDonnell: And then what would happen? What would the next sanction be? It must be a free ticket to Anfield. Once we have legislation that bans human basic human rights, it must be taken to the ultimate conclusion—as with the Shrewsbury pickets—of locking people up. Amendment No. 1 is farcical. I always thought that the organisation Conservative Trade Unionists was a contradiction in terms.
I just hope that trade unionists have witnessed this debate. The 9 million members of the TUC will now know that if they go on strike under a future Conservative Government, if ever elected, that Government could define their industry as an essential service. The members would then not only lose their right to a negotiated settlement, but their right to strike and, eventually, to trade union membership.
What is an essential service? Is it the ambulance service? We had an ambulance service dispute a short time ago. Is it local government? We had a social services dispute last year. Is it transport? Some American states are seeking to ban strike action in the shipping industry and control who may work in the industry.
We have had a revelation tonight of what a Conservative Government would mean for trade unions. I sometimes have a few problems with new Labour, but this debate has reassured me about why it is important to maintain Labour in power. It is clear that fundamental human rights would disappear if a Conservative Government were ever elected again.
Amendment No. 14 seeks to delete from the definition of conditions of service the words
- "hours of duty or leave".
Matthew Green: I thought that the Conservatives had so far lived up to their latest more cuddly incarnation and their attempts to be the middle-of-the-road party. The way in which they dealt with the first few groups of amendments could certainly have fooled people into thinking that. However, on amendment No.1, the ugly face of Conservatism has re-emerged. People are right to be concerned about what will happen if parties to the dispute refuse to accept the settlement imposed under the Bill. If the Conservative amendment had stopped at disciplinary offences, we could have understood their logic—although we would not have supported it. However, the Conservatives have gone one step further. They want to include membership of trade unions. This is GCHQ all over again.
Mr. Hammond: Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that the amendment is based on the current practice with police regulations? Members of police forces are not allowed to belong to a police force trade union—although, bizarrely, they can retain membership of a union that is irrelevant to their police service. Officers cannot belong to a police trade union, and it is a disciplinary offence to fail to obey a lawful order. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that what our constituents care about is the preservation of public safety and security. It is much to their credit that fire brigades members play as important a role as the police in protecting us against the threats that we face every day in our society.
Matthew Green: Ambulance workers do the same, as do workers in NHS accident and emergency
departments and, to some extent, the people who work in our power stations. The logic of the amendment is that if—heaven forbid—there were to be another Conservative Government, strikes would be banned every time there was industrial action in any sector that could be said to affect public safety. Moreover, the workers in those sectors would be banned from belonging to trade unions. The amendment is more than draconian—
John McDonnell: It is fascism.
Matthew Green: I shall not repeat the word used from a sedentary position by a Labour Member, but the amendment goes well beyond anything that the Conservatives have said before on the matter. It is incredible that the proposal should have been introduced in this way.
The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) did not want to use a certain word when he asked about disciplinary offences, but it is clear that the Conservatives would sack fire brigade personnel. If the amendment were agreed and a settlement imposed, everyone who refused to accept it would be sacked. If all the FBU members went out on strike, the Conservatives would sack them, with the result that we would not have a fire service. Presumably, the Army would have to step in—the very thing that the Conservatives are trying to avoid.
Mr. Hammond: What would happen, in the absence of the amendment, if the Secretary of State imposed a settlement that was rejected by fire service personnel, who then went on strike?
Matthew Green: It is to cover exactly that circumstance that we tried to introduce, earlier in the Bill's passage through the House, provisions to allow rounds of arbitration and postal ballots. None of us wants to get to the stage that the hon. Gentleman has described, but the problem with the amendment is that it sends a message to fire brigade members that a future Conservative Government would impose a pay settlement and sack anyone who did not like it. Then there would be no fire service, and we would have to start all over again. We would have to recruit brand-new people to the service, and the Army would have to cover the entire country during that period.
Jeremy Corbyn: I am following the hon. Gentleman's speech with interest. Will he confirm that Shropshire would not be a strike-free zone? I hope that it would not. However, is not the logic of the argument for the amendment that members of a union would be dismissed from their place of work and only allowed back if they signed some sort of loyalty oath, to the effect that they would not take part in industrial action or join a trade union? That is what has happened in other countries with oppressive Governments who operate on principles that are totally anti-trade union—principles that the modern Conservative party seems to want to adopt.
Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman may know more about other countries' arrangements. He might be disappointed to learn that FBU members in Shropshire continued to go on strike only because they felt that they
owed it to fellow union members in other parts of the country. They wanted to accept the settlements, and that has been the feeling in Shropshire for some time. I therefore do not think that there exists the strength of feeling that the hon. Gentleman suggests.
Mr. Hammond: Will the hon. Gentleman remind me of how many times since 1919 policemen have had to be dismissed because they went on strike? How many times has the Army had to take over the role of the police? What the hon. Gentleman describes is not a real situation, and it does not happen in practice.
Our point is that we need to recognise that the time has come to place the fire service on a par with the police service. As we go forward with the Minister's White Paper and the new Fire Services Act that this Bill will become, there will have to be proper and independent arrangements for setting fire service pay in the absence of a right to strike.
8.45 pm
Matthew Green: We have just heard Conservative policy and we can assume that it would also have to apply to ambulance workers, as a minimum—
David Davis: How many strikes since 1919? Does the hon. Gentleman know?
Matthew Green: No, of course I do not know how many strikes there have been since 1919.
It is clear that the right hon. Gentleman does not have much understanding of how to resolve industrial disputes. Threatening to ban people from membership of a trade union generates industrial disputes, as happened at GCHQ, rather than resolving them. Such inflammatory language—the pun is not intended—will serve only to encourage FBU members to reject the offer on 12 June. It is unfortunate that the Conservatives tabled such an amendment. There is no way we could support it; indeed, we shall vote against it.
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